Influence in American Legislatures

This project examines the process and implications of political influence in American state legislatures. I argue that legislators’ reliance on one another for information creates a distribution of informal power that can be used by any member, regardless of rank or seniority, to achieve political goals. Using ten years of temporal cosponsorship data from seven U.S. states, I test a theory of asymmetric polarization in co-partisan influence. Results show that the distribution of members’ ideology is central to the importance of ideological cues. Unlike traditional models of legislative bargaining, I find that ideologically extreme officials are more influential than their moderate counterparts. Together, these results imply that directional movement in party ideology may be partially achieved through spatial decisions made over a sustained period of time. A related survey of American adults shows a complex relationship between voters' appreciation for influence and its institutional applications and usage.